Category: batting

  • A question for coaches who also play — does coaching improve your own play?

    I have had an odd experience, recently.

    Coaching a very competent cricketer, finessing his bat path for an on-drive. And somehow, the work with my client seems to have transferred (positively) to my own batting technique.

    Can coaching someone else improve the coach’s own playing technique? Is “subliminal skill acquisition” a thing?

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  • Simple net game, revisited

    I have been delivering an after-school club this term. As happened last year, we have been evicted from the newly built sports hall to accommodate exams. Unlike last time, we have been able to carry on with the weekly club, but in the much smaller and very crowded old sports hall.

    So small and crowded, in fact, that the only safe option has been to roll out the nets to keep the players away from table tennis tables, rowing machines, badminton nets, benches and other clutter.

    Rather than a basic net session, I wanted to utilise the simple net game format, with a points system designed to reward specific behaviours beyond just “having a hit”!

    But, as I can’t resist tinkering with games, the points scoring system was modified, in an attempt to make the practice a little more realistic.

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  • What can we learn from “…a fast slow-left-arm unorthodox orthodox bowler…”?

    A fascinating look at Axar Patel’s startling bowling successes, from Jarrod Kimber’s presentation based on data analysis by Himanish Ganjoo.

    I do enjoy this type of analysis, partly for the insight into exactly what is going on in the professional game (“we’d hit him all over the park if he bowled like that at us”…), but mostly for the opportunity to consider how the relevant skills might be coached, and how they might be counter-acted.

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